Git Intro Workshop – JPE Replicator Website

🛠️ Pre-Workshop Setup Guide: VScode + Git + GitHub (HTTPS Authentication)

Welcome to the Git Workshop! Follow these steps before the session to make sure you’re ready to use Git and GitHub with HTTPS authentication.

Make sure you have:

Git installed (check with git --version)
A GitHub account (https://github.com)
A working terminal (e.g. Git Bash on Windows, Terminal on macOS/Linux)
VScode installed, otherwise click here. You need this tool to write reports.
You can download the Github GUI for your OS as well: https://desktop.github.com/download/. This is helpful for authentication issues (authenticates seamlessly).

To avoid entering your credentials every time, configure Git to store them securely.

git config --global credential.helper manager-core

git config --global credential.helper osxkeychain

git config --global credential.helper cache

💡 You only need to run this once per system.

Visit: https://github.com/settings/tokens
Click “Generate new token (classic)”
Fill in the form:
- Note: Git Workshop Token
- Expiration: 90 days
- Scopes:
  - ✅ repo – full access to GitHub repositories
  - ✅ workflow – allows triggering and viewing GitHub Actions
Click Generate token
Copy the token now — you won’t be able to see it again.
➤ Save it in a safe place on your computer, like a plain text file:
my-github-token.txt

Run the following command to verify that Git can connect to GitHub using HTTPS:

git ls-remote https://github.com/github/gitignore.git

You will be prompted for your GitHub username and your Personal Access Token as the password.

✅ If it returns a list of references (e.g. refs/heads/main), you’re ready.
❌ If authentication fails, double-check that your token has the correct scopes and hasn’t expired.

Set your name and email so commits are properly attributed.

git config --global user.name "Your Full Name"
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"